New Emails Deepen RFK Jr. Controversy

Senator Bernie Sanders released a trove of internal emails that he says show Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pressured the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to change its vaccine messaging — and a federal court has now stepped in to block key parts of Kennedy’s agenda.

Story Snapshot

Internal emails released by Sen. Sanders appear to show RFK Jr.’s team pushing the CDC to shift its vaccine guidance.
Kennedy fired all 17 members of the CDC’s vaccine advisory panel and replaced them with his own picks, several of whom hold anti-vaccine views.
A federal judge issued a preliminary injunction blocking Kennedy’s new advisory panel appointments and pausing his revised childhood vaccine schedule.
The fired CDC director says Kennedy pressured her to pre-approve the new panel’s recommendations — Kennedy flatly denies it.

Sanders Drops Internal Emails on RFK Jr.’s CDC Push

Senator Bernie Sanders released a batch of internal Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) emails that he says show Kennedy’s team working to pressure the CDC over vaccine messaging. The emails add fuel to an already heated fight over who controls the nation’s vaccine policy. Kennedy has long argued that the CDC drifted from its core mission and that public trust was damaged by what he calls “politicized science and mission creep.”

Kennedy fired the entire 17-member Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) — the expert panel that advises the CDC on vaccine use — and replaced all of them with his own selections.^[6] He said the move was needed to rid the agency of conflicts of interest. However, research from the University of Southern California’s Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics found that reported conflicts on the panel had actually been at historic lows for years before Kennedy acted, with less than 1% of conflicts tied to personal income from vaccine makers.^[9]

Fired CDC Director Says She Was Pressured

Former CDC Director Dr. Susan Monarez wrote in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece that Kennedy “pressured me to resign or face termination” and told her to pre-approve the new panel’s vaccine recommendations — even if they conflicted with scientific evidence.^[2] Kennedy denied this at a Senate Finance Committee hearing, saying he never held a private meeting with her and calling her account a lie.^[5] Monarez’s lawyers fired back, calling Kennedy’s claims “false, and at times, patently ridiculous.”

Kennedy also personally directed the CDC to update its website to remove the long-standing statement that vaccines do not cause autism.^[3] The updated page now says that claim lacks a “solid evidential foundation.” Decades of research consistently show no link between vaccines and autism. Kennedy acknowledged to the New York Times that studies show no connection between autism and the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine or the preservative thimerosal.^[3]

Federal Judge Puts Kennedy’s Vaccine Agenda on Hold

A federal judge in Massachusetts issued a preliminary injunction freezing Kennedy’s ACIP appointments, ruling that most of his chosen members were unqualified and that the restructuring likely violated the Federal Advisory Committee Act.^[11] The court also paused Kennedy’s revised childhood vaccine schedule, which had proposed dropping routine recommendations for flu, rotavirus, hepatitis A and B, meningitis, and RSV shots for children.^[13]

Sanders releases trove of internal HHS emails showing RFK Jr. pressured CDC over vaccine messaging https://t.co/hlR7gXtgb2

— epiphany007 (@whichwayisup00) June 26, 2026

The ruling came in the case American Academy of Pediatrics et al. v. Kennedy et al., filed after Kennedy changed COVID-19 vaccine recommendations without the advisory panel’s input.^[11] The judge wrote that there is “a method to how these decisions historically have been made” and that bypassing that process “undermined the integrity” of the government’s actions.^[14] The case is not fully resolved — the injunction is a temporary hold while the lawsuit continues. More than 20 medical organizations have called for Kennedy’s resignation, and the American Medical Association has asked the Senate to investigate.^[5]^[10]